A political ad is a big investment in addressing an issue, and Moe’s political issues are clearly not in Shellbrook.
So what’s going on in Premier Scott Moe’s hometown of Shellbrook?
Shellbrook is “a great town … like so many other places across Saskatchewan,” Moe boasts in his latest ads.
No one is arguing with that. And one might expect to hear that from the premier of a province that tends to pride itself on hometown pride.
That said, political ads are expensive and the message must be chosen wisely. A political ad is a big investment in addressing an issue, and Moe’s political issues are clearly not in Shellbrook.
In the 2020 general election, Moe received 79.54 per cent of the popular vote in Rosthern-Shellbrook — third-best in the province in 2020 behind Sask. Party candidates in Wood River and Lloydminster.
As stunning as that number was, it wasn’t all that exceptional in the 2020 Sask. Party sweep of the 29 rural seats all won by its candidates by a remarkable average of 72.89 per cent of the riding’s popular vote.
Well, one should understand that the Sask. Party and rural Saskatchewan are completely intertwined, both politically and philosophically. It’s nearly impossible to separate one from the other.
Moreover, this isn’t the first time Moe has made it known that his hometown has a disproportionate effect on his policies.
Shellbrook people, evidently, repeatedly told him last year that he was spot on when it came to Bill 137, prohibiting students’ use of preferred pronouns at school without parental consent.
However, the real issue here — one Moe alludes to in the ad — was in play in rural Saskatchewan long before the internet started birthing conspiracies. It’s the age-old issue of rural depopulation, which has long been the focus of Saskatchewan election fights.
During the 1982 election, then-Progressive Conservative leader Grant Devine, in his “There’s so much more we could be” campaign, delivered stirring speeches with the tale of an older rural couple who had the Easter weekend circled because that would be the next time the kids and grandkids came home for a visit from Alberta.
The NDP under Roy Romanow flipped the script in 1991, running ads of a bus pulling up to a farmyard where the dad and mom tearfully hugged their daughter before she boarded it for a life to the west.
Traditionally, it’s been opposition parties bringing up this age-old problem, but it likely makes some sense for Moe and the Sask. Party to proactively address this matter.
While Moe and his government can claim Saskatchewan has experienced overall growth during their 17-year tenure, that growth has mostly taken place in Saskatoon and Regina, not places like Shellbrook, where the 2021 Canada Census population of 1,330 was 7.2 per cent smaller than its 1,433 population when Moe was first elected as its MLA in 2021.
What’s going in Shellbrook and elsewhere in rural Saskatchewan is the same longstanding problem of declining towns. It seems Moe is trying to get the issue before someone else does.
Mandryk is the political columnist the Regina Leader-Post and the Saskatoon StarPhoenix.
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